Bend Sinister
Finally just done something Ive been meaning to for years, and read my first book by Vladimir Nabokov. Sound thinking to seek out the author no doubt, probably more suspect reasoning to start with Bend Sinister, chosen purely because The Fall named one of their albums after it. But anyway, you pays your money etc. etc.
Stylistically, I don’t think I’ve come across a more challenging author in years. The endless word-play, extravagant metaphor, narrative digressions, violent shifts of emphasis and tone etc. etc. were certainly dizzying at times. In fact at points I became downright irritated. I was also irritated at times with the main character, philosopher Adam Krug, individualist bastion against the totalitarian state, but also a gruff, unlovely bully. Indeed, as a satire against state excess the book is at times clumsy.
And yet for all that, the constant incredible invention, the beautiful passages of description, the ever-present demure terror, the abnormally profound intensity of its perception, the sheer exhilarating weirdness of the whole thing together with a heart-rending ending made for a great read.
I’m told there are better works by Vlad, and I often got the feeling that if his unique style could better focussed something even greater could result. I think I’ll try Pale Fire sometime next year, unless anyone thinks there’s one that’s better than that, and tells me.
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8 Responses to “Bend Sinister”
steve
November 12th, 2005
All VN’s books are good with the possible exception of his big book, Ada, which I’ve never been able to finish. Pale Fire is certainly at the top of the list. Lolita needs no coment, is unique. Speak, Memory is one of the great memoirs in the English language. I like King, Queen, Knave, Transparent Things, and The Defense quite a bit, too. Brian Boyd’s two volume biography is fantastic.
Anonymous
November 12th, 2005
Thanks Steve, and thanks “Anon” too. I shall try either Pale Fire, Lolita, or Sebastian Knight in the coming year. I may choose it random from the three, “tail-on-donkey” style.
Ben G
November 12th, 2005
Ben, are you sure The Fall named the lp after the novel? Bend Sinister means a diagonal line on coat of arms indicating bastardy, apparently.
steve
November 13th, 2005
Steve:- Bend Sinister was the second proper album I got by the great Fall (first was :- “Shift-Work”); and by “got” I mean borrowed from York Library and then recorded; aged 15.
I looked up the reference at the time, and saw what you say now, and thought it was just a humurous way of saying “Bastard!” which did me fine.
The Middles and Ford biogs which I reviewed last year however both make reference to the album taking its name from the Nabakov book.
Speculation on their part perhaps; but the Middles book was actually written with MES’s co-operation. Presumably he’d have put him right on the point? Moreover, upon actually reading it I can see how the frigged up language would appeal to MES completely! Indeed the whole feel of the book hand something “Fall-esque” about it for me.
So, not totally sure, but 80% sure maybe……
Ben G
November 13th, 2005
..Sebastian Knight was also Nabokov’s alleged favorite; he often hinted at its existence to those for whom his own name meant Lolita and little else..
Matt
November 14th, 2005
To be honest, the reason I didn’t just read “Lolita” straight away, or at least automatically choose it as my next choice, is a perhaps wrong-headed and neurotic wish to avoid “the obvious”.
I’ve often gone for just “that” book, ie. “Crime and Punishment” for Dostoyevsky, “Clockwork Orange” for Burgess etc. etc. etc. For this reason I often try to deliberately “counterbalance” such choices. I’ve got a paranoid fear of becoming a walking version of a “Now That’s What I Call Great Literature!” compilation and am trying deliberately to go off the beaten track.
There’s good and bad in both approaches. For instance, “Crime and Punishment” was so great it lead me onto the far more difficult but equally rewarding in its manner “Brothers Karamazov”. I’d probably never have perservered with the latter if I ain’t read the former. Hmm haa, must post on this sometime.
Ben G
November 14th, 2005
Lolita is magnificent though … the recent edition has a quote from martin amis on the back which sums it up. Something like “the kind of book you would read lazing in a hammock, arm dangling over the side, nodding in scandalised assent” (completely quoting from memory there, so obviously not up to Amis’s prose style!)
Having said that, Pale Fire was my first Nabokov, and still my favourite. Worth reading twice - once through by flicking between the poem and the footnotes, and once through as written (ie ignore the footnotes until the end).
Anonymous
November 16th, 2005
That site you link to has ‘The Real Life of Sebastian Knight’ as one of VN’s ‘American Novels’. I’d say it was an English Novel if anything. I haven’t read all of the novels, not even half, but this was a favourite. Lolita has to be the best though.